2 of my friends and I decided to do a Memorial Day Ski weekend last year for the first time. After that, I wanted to make it a tradition. As you get older, you see your friends less and less. I view it as a way to have some fun adventures in the great outdoors with your best friends. This year we went again. Our plan was to meet up in Aspen Friday night. We were planning to ski Castle Peak & Conundrum Peak Saturday and the Pearl Couloir off of Cathedral Peak on Sunday. I decided to take Friday off and snowboard the North Face of La Plata Peak on Friday morning before I met up with them in Aspen. Below is a recap.

Friday 5/23/2025 - I hit the trail at 5:51 AM. I decided to do the standard route up, rather than climbing the North Face itself. It was a fairly straightforward hike. I got a little off track between tree line and the start of the ridgeline due to snow on the trail. Once I got to the saddle, it was a straight shot to the summit. The views from the La Plata summit are incredible! I hung out on the summit for around 30 minutes and took in the amazing scenery. Then, I dropped into the North Face. The snow was pretty solid. The sun was hitting about 3/4" of my ski line all the way down. So, most of it was soft snow with some icy spots mixed in. Overall, the snowboard down from the summit to the valley area was great. The views in that valley area are awesome too. La Plata is a beast of a mountain. It is cool seeing it up close like that from that vantage point. Once I got to the valley area, I snowboarded down as far as I could go. Eventually, the snow was so warm that I was sinking in my snowboard. After that happened, I decided to start the bush whack back to the standard trail. It was brutal. I snowboarded a little too far right and it made the hike back to the standard trail a little rougher. I had to traverse sideways in knee deep snow with probably 300-foot elevation gain. Eventually, I got back to the standard trail below tree line after a long bush whack. After that, it was back to the car easy. I got back to the car at 12:09 PM. Total time was 6 hours and 18 minutes. It was a great way to start the weekend. Then, I drove to Aspen and met up with my buddies. We set up camp at dispersed camp site #1 on the Castle Creek Trailhead Road.

Saturday 5/24/2025 - We hit the trail at 4:47 AM. The plan was to ski both the Conundrum Couloir off of Conundrum Peak & the North Face Couloir off of Castle Peak. The trail was fairly snow packed right past the Creek crossing. However, it wasn't sustained enough for my buddies to want to skin. Once we got to the bridge crossing, the trail was bone dry for like half a mile. We eventually got to the drainage basin area and it was back to continuous snow. My 2 buddies never ended up skinning. It was a slog all the way to the base of Castle & Conundrum. We were originally going to hike the standard Conundrum route up to the saddle between Castle & Conundrum. Then, go right and hit the Conundrum Peak summit that way. However, it didn't look like it was worth it. So, we decided to go up the Conundrum Couloir instead. There were some groups in front of us and we followed them. The couloir hike itself was fine. We followed their boot pack and didn't have to break any trail. That was quite nice! Eventually, we summitted Conundrum Peak and took in the views. Then, we hopped onto our skis and snowboard. The couloir skied very well. The choke point was fairly sketchy but had some sun on it when we skied down it. We are lucky for that because that choke point with no sun would be quite sketchy. We later found out that one of the groups in front of us bailed on it because they figured it wasn't going to have sun on it. We skied the Conundrum Couloir at the perfect time. It had enough sun, but not too much to be worried about wet slide activity. We skied the Conundrum Couloir to the base of the North Face Couloir of Castle Peak. Now, it was time to transition back to hiking mode and hike up to the summit of Castle Peak. The North Face Couloir was an easy hike up to the summit. We once again followed other people's boot pack steps. That would become a common theme on this trip. The North Face Couloir was skiable but had lots of exposed rocks. Overall, it was a fun ride. We were able to ski from the summit of Castle Peak all the way to where the road got dry just past the drainage basin area. Then, we dry hiked from that point to the bridge crossing where there was snow again. We put our skis and snowboard back on and were able to ski all the way to within approximately 1.5 miles from our campsite. Being able to ski that far down was awesome. It cut off multiple hours of descent time. We hiked the last 1.5 miles to the campsite. We got back to the campsite at 2:04 PM. Total time was 9 hours and 17 minutes. Being able to hike & ski two 14ers in the same day was pretty cool. It was a phenomenal day!

Sunday 5/25/2025 - We hit the Cathedral Peak Trail at 5:39 AM. I could tell this was going to be a cool hike right off the bat. The Aspens were abundant. I can only imagine this hike in the Fall. The views along the way were tremendous once you got out of the trees. The hike was dry almost all the way to Cathedral Lake. We eventually got to the valley area to the right of the lake after some bush whacking fun. Our mission was the Pearl Couloir. There were 2 guys in front of us and we slowly followed behind them. The couloir looked in and we went for it. Just like Saturday, we followed the boot pack from the group in front of us and didn't have to break trail. That was nice because there were some deep sections of snow in the Pearl Couloir in certain spots. Overall, the Pearl Couloir hiked well. Once to the top, you had to hook a left to get to the ridgeline to the summit. It was a fairly sketch spot on some very loose rock where it transitioned from snow to dry rock right before the ridgeline. Once we got to the ridgeline, it was like a 1-minute walk to the true summit. The Pearl Couloir skied great. It was sun baked and corn snow. We hit it at the perfect time. We were able to ski all the way back to where we started the bush whack. We hiked the rest of the way back to the car. We got back to the car at 1:56 PM. Total time was 8 hours and 17 minutes. Another fantastic day in the mountains!

Overall, it was a tremendous weekend! All 3 of the 14ers were repeats for me. However, the first time I hiked them were all summer hikes in late July and early August. This time I hiked a different route up all 3 peaks and was able to snowboard down all 3 of them. Cathedral Peak was a new summit for me. I am glad I was able to knock out a Centennial peak. When I saw Cathedral Peak last year from the summits of Castle & Conundrum, I knew I would be back to hike that one. That last scramble added a slight mountaineering tint to the adventure. The boys & I all agree that the Pearl Couloir took the cake as the best ski line of the weekend. I would highly recommend skiing any of these peaks. The Elk Range is beautiful. I hope this trip report encourages some people to ski these peaks. They will not disappoint!